Pancakei
The Breakfast Baron
YSS Kaiyo
Engineering
14日 5月 YE 39
1730 Hours
In the past few days following the strange encounter and subsequent capture by the IYS Kaiyo, Anastasia Barlow had become somewhat of a recluse. It seemed she had taken Teien Eden's orders a little more to the word than usual, spending most of her available time in the engineering bay. It was a mystery to most of the crew what exactly she was cooking up in there in the late hours. Also, it appears she misplaced the pantry's box of Space Puffs.
The winged technician stepped back from the maintenence access shute she had just climbed out of. Taking a moment to admire her handiwork, Anastasia sat on a nearby plastic chair, looking around the empty, yet noisy bay with tired eyes. It's been a long day.
Whith a smooth whizzing noise that would most likely be drowned out by all the mechanical music in the background, the door of the engineering bay slid open, but no footsteps could be heard. Instead the nigh silent rustling of Abart'huse's large serpentine lower body slid across the ground, peeking into the engineering bay out of sheer boredom, humming a tune from jojo's mysterious travels, one of his favourites. "Hmmm hmmm hm hmmm hmmmm~"
Orion walked walked into the engineering bay after, holding a bottle containing water he had previously obtained from the canteen, currently closed in it's original state. He scanned the room for Anastasia, once he located her, he walked up to her quickly.
"I got you some water... Thought you might want some"
The blue winged Elysian extended his arm currently holding the water bottle over to Ana, so she could easily grab it if she wanted to.
Anastasia looked up from her chair, smiling at the sudden visit from Orion. She was wearing a toolbelt-wrapped Type 22 Bodysuit, its red panels stained with a fair bit of grime. "Oh, thank you!" she replied as she gladly took the bottle of water, opening it and taking a swig. "What are you doing here?"
She didn't seem to notice Abart'huse's silent entrance, being on the floor lower than him.
"Just came to visit, and get you the water bottle"
He looked around the engineering bay, smiling slightly, he was a bit worried about Anastasia, she had been working way too much in the past few days, he hadn't even seen her out of the engineering bay.
"You've been working hard down here..."
"Yeah, we haven't seen you in days!" Abart's head soon came popping out into Ana's view, curiously looking around the place. "The guy was getting kinda worried back there, you should've seen his face." He joked a bit, clearly trying to tease Orion a bit more. The past weeks have been boring the heck out of the snek, and one can only do the same excersise so many times before geting sick of it. It was a good thing he still had plenty of sketch paper left, otherwise he would truely lose it on the isolated Kaiyo.
"Abart....."
The blue winged infantry looked back at the snek, the smile disappearing from his face as his cheeks turned red. The now flustered birb took a deep breath and turned back to Anastasia.
"I guess..he is kinda right"
Anastasia looked between the two as they bickered, deciding not to interrupt. "Well, thank you both for visiting!" The cobalt angel stood slowly, giving a small, almost silent giggle. "I've been working day in and out on a method of getting us out of this jam. I've got a theory."
With that, the technician patted the side of the reactor's control pannel, before bringing out a data pad. "Want to hear it?.."
"Not like we're busy at the moment.... right?" The Separa leaned on the top of a nearby machinery box thing. That't the best he could come up with in terms of naming the various bits of equipment in the room. He probs wouldn't understand too much of the technical parts of her story, but she seemed quite confident in her goings-about, so he might as well hear what she had to say. "Let's hear it."
"Sure why not.." Orion replied as he looked up to his much taller crush.
"I don't think we will understand much but... Give it a shot..
Anastasia clapped her hands together, bringing up a few displays on the data pad. They resembled Plumeria model starship engine and reactor schematics. "Well, I have plans to reconfigure the engines to give us an emergency escape jump." Anastasia pointed to the rather large engine accesses to the sides of the group. "I've already set the systems to their max, but it wasn't quite enough. I'm working on pushing the engines just... a little bit past their safety cap to get us home. Once we figure out where that is..."
"By pushing our reactor output to about 2.37 times it's standard generationa rate, and diverting extra energy into the engines without the standard safety caps, my math shows we should get an extraordinary speed boost that will hopefully put us out of reach of the IYS Kaiyō... imposters... Of course, that kind of reaction would create a damaging excess of heat to the engines, so I'll have to increase the pressure of the cooling tanks to compensate. If not, it might burn up all the oxygen in here... and leave us with piles of slag for engines... "
Anastasia ruffled her wings a little bit, closing the display on the datapad. She seemed slightly concerned about that last thought. Soon she had a grin again. "That's the simple explanation. Make sense?"
".........." The blank stare on the Separa's face revealed all the little mental gears running and turning in his head, trying to figure out all that stuff she just said. Safety cap? Cooling? Reconfigure? Last time he heard those words was whilst watching one of those car movies he'd seen a while back. Too bad he himself wouldn't be able to drift like that... "So.....you're gonna NOS the heck out of here....?
"...What? Why would I use nitrous" Anastasia asked, puzzled. "But yes, I... prefer the term sciencing."
Anastasia had not seen many car related movies, though from mechanical experience she knew what he was trying to say.
"You basically gave the reactor an upgrade so it could create enough power to break free from the IYS?"
Orion looked at Anastasia with a slightly confused looking face.
"Yyyes, thats what I hope. It'd be easiest and least risky if we could break free from the tractor beam in a less explosive fashion, but if we can't, then this might just do it." Anastasia looked back over at the two, smiling a little awkwardly. "The math seems to check out."
"I'll take your word for it!" The snek quickly snapped back to attention, having spaced out a little during their conversation. "So far we've always counted on you keeping our gear in perfect order, and you've never let us down. This time's no differrent!" With a quick thumbs up he beamed at the mechanibirb, making his pointy teefers clearly visible.
"Agreed, I don't remember the last time something you made went wrong... Im saying this in the way of nothing you've ever built has gone wrong just in case..."
One of Orions wings twitched as he talked, the blush that previously was on his face decreasing until gone.
Anastasia smiled, looking at the two. "Thank you both. It shouldn't take too long to finish, provided nothing goes wrong I'll only be in here for a few more days..." Anastasia's eyes drooped as she paused, exhaling. "But I guess I can take a break for a little bit."
"Sure! No point in trying to fix up the Kaiyo if yer slowly breaking yerself in the proces." With a little tailswish, his face took on a slightly mischevious look for a second. "I'm kinda thirsty by the way, can i get you two something as well?" He said, perking up a bit with a slightly too exirlted tone, looking between Orion and Anastasia. "Im thinking of an iced tea~" The forked tonguetip ran across his lips, already imagining the sweet, ice-cold freshness.
"I'd just go with water.. I don't really like the taste of iced tea... Echh..."
He looked up at the snek with a "disgusted" face, just to try and annoy him. His wings twitched slightly behind him.
"Hmmkay, a plain 'ol water.... Ana, what about you?" Abart waved it off mostly, aside from sticking out this forked tongue at the teasing bluebirb.
The exhausted Anastasia looked up at the reptilian coworker, thinking for a moment. "I don't really have a preference. Something with caffeine."
Orion smiled as he silently stuck out his own tounge in a snake like manner, mocking the snek yet again.
"Off you go then!" He said as he tried to imitate a British accent, making it a bit too exaggerated, but that would work.
"Heh, sure thing Ana." He replied. After all that work he couldn't blame her for just wanting to stuff some caffeïne down her throat, even if he wasn't a big fan of it himself. Tea was actually a bit more common on Essia than coffee, oddly enough.
Well then, i'll be right back! You two just.....do things.... nor not, i dunno." He turned his body around, smoothly, as if it were on a pivot, slithering off towards the wardroom leaving the birbs alone in the engi-bay. As he slid back past Orion, his tailtip gave a quick, light pat to orion's leg, almost as if tapping out. All that ws missing was the "Go get her hotshot." one would usually see in the movies.
Anastasia was quiet for a moment, watching Abart slither away with a slight bit of unease. She spoke up a moment later, looking at Orion. "Eeeegh. Isn't he your roommate?"
"Yep... He is..." He sighed. "We tend to bother each other as much as possible, he seems obsessed about the thought that you and I are a match..."
"Oohhh..." Anastasia said, trailing off. "I don't like to sound rude, but Separa freak me out a bit."
The technician looked around the large engineering bay, and at the work she still had to do...
"You know, I haven't put much thought into what'll happen if... when we get back." She looked back at Orion, emerald eyes questioning. "I've, erm... bent several Star Army codes in here. Desperate times..."
"Im sure Eden will do something on your favor, you are doing everything you can to get us out, im sure everyone here would appreciate a ticket back home..."
Anastasia looked down at the floor, bashful and red. "...Thank you." After a moment, she looked back up. "It's going to be a strange ride, that's for sure."
Silence crept into the engineering bay, only just kept away by the droning of electrical systems and air pumps. Anastasia thought to her self tiredly, starting to bring out all the deep thoughts.
"Do you ever wonder, if there's anyone looking for us?"
"LLooking for us as in, spying for us and trying to track us down?"
The Elysian looked at Anastasia with a slightly confused face.
"Why do you ask?"
"Trying to track us. If we've been warped to some... unknown space, I can only imagine what the rest of our fleet might of seen. We could of just... dissappeared off the grid." Anastasia shuddered a little bit, thinking about what would happen if they couldn't find their way back. "I'm a little afraid. Of the clones."
"Dont be,they're just reverse you... Mine just annoys me to death... And...who knows.. maybe they think we were captured by the attackers or something, maybe they are, maybe they aren't... There's no way to tell"
"Yeah... Just, pray for the best, I guess." Anastasia looked at Orion's purple eyes and smiled, thinking to herself. "But that's all we can do. What have you been up to recently?"
"Attempting to counter tease my roommate, sleep, go to the gym.. do other boring stuff, watching sci fi movies of some sort"
"Mmmm..." Anastasia hummed, looking out into the wide bay. "I've been spending most of my free time in here, and Yoshida has been spending a crazy amount of time in the gym. I think she's feeling a little... insecure, too."
"Hm... Last time I saw her she looked absolutely pissed...strange behavior to come from that neko.."
"Yeah... she can be kind of terrifying sometimes." Anastasia looked back at Orion. "Our room is always a little strange." The technician leaned back in her chair, looking at the various pipes running across the ceiling.
"Want me to tell you a little secret of Abart? Don't tell anyone though" he said as a little smile evil smiled formed on his face.
Anastasia glanced over at Orion. "Well, I'm fairly good with... secrets. Sure." She broke into a little grin too, stretching her cobalt wings behind her while yawning quietly.
"Lets just say uhh.. our good friend Abart has a crush... Guess on who?"
The technician thought for a moment, humming as she finished stretching. "I don't know... Who?" Her look was questioning, with a little hint of something else under it.
"The resident neko Hanna of course!"
He said as he grinned.
"Aaaaah, I see." Anastasia grimaced. She didn't much like Hanna. She was almost sure the feeling was mutual. She shook the thought out of her mind and looked back over at Orion, crossing one leg over the other. "So, do you have a crush?"
There was a sly little smile on the technicians face. She knew something.
"Uuuuuuuhhhhhmmmmm........"
The birbs face turned red instantly as his "crush" asked him if he had a "crush". The flustered birb felt his face heat up as he looked over at Ana.
Anastasia leaned back and gave a quiet little laugh as Orion's face turned beet red. After a moment she leaned forward. "Hey, it's alright. I think I know." She gave a wide smile, standing up to face the flustered sniper. "I figured it out a while back."
"HmHmmm... So... Now the question resides in, do you have a crush?"
He said as he kept looking at her, even as she got closer.
Anastasia smiled. "For the record, yes. I like you! You're kind of funny, and talking to you seems to make your day better. Also, your job is pretty awesome."
"Yeah... Talking to you makes me forget im antisocial for some reason... And... You consider aiming a lethal stick at enemies awesome?"
"Well, not so much the lethal stick as much as being able to do that from crazy high places. Most of the time I'm forcing myself into a cramped conduit... Ya know?" Anastasia smiled, placing a hand on Orion's shoulder. "You helped teach me how to fly, that's something I've rarely gotten the chance to even think about.
"You're welcome... Atleast you had the privilege to learn outside. I learnt how to fly inside my old house, first time I hit my head with the ceiling... Hard.."
Anastasia smiled and tilted her head to the side, before frowning just a bit. "Yeeah, its not much of an inside sport, is it?..." Anastasia put her hands together, blushing as the realization that in her sleep-deprived stupor she had said more than she realized. "Sooo, yeah..!"
"I see im not the only one who is currently blushing... Thats relieving.. I thought I was being an idiot up until now...", said Orion.
"Dont worry, you two are both looking goofy enough to me~" With a toothy grin Abart peeked right at the two lovebirds, lying on top of a nearby storage crate like the sneaky snek he was. His tail protruded forward from behind him, holding their respective beverages. "Here's your drinks."
Anastasia nearly jumped out of her skin as the snake made his sudden reappearance, her dark blue feathers visibly ruffled. She turned to face the snake, shaken but still red. "A-bart'huse!.." She calmed and noticed the drinks, awkwardly picking hers up off the reptilian tail table. She took a sip of the caffeinated beverage, though it looks like the scare has already woken her up.
"Aargh!"
The fellow birb faced his rival snek as he jumped and almost fell from where he was sitting. His expression then changed from spooked to annoyed.
"Abarrrrt! Don't do that....!"
Abart'huse couldn't suppress a soft giggle, clearly planning something like this from the start. He wiggled his tail in front of Orion, still holding out his drink. "C'moooon, t'was only a little spook. Everyone's been acting so serious and tense lately.... try to loosen up a bit." while he sure got a kick out of jumpscaring the two like that, he figured it would be a good way to break the ice somewhat between the three, especially during these weird times, locked up in some whacky mirror world.
Anastasia continued sipping her drink as she watched Orion take his own. The technician curled her gloved fingers around the sniper's, giving him a look with her eyes that said "Talk later?" The sneaky snakiness of his roommate was still getting at her internally, but she wanted not to show it too much on the outside. They would have to talk to Abart'huse at some point, but for now she chose to remain quiet on the rather embarrassing revelations they had just given by the light of the deadly aether reactor mere meters away from them.
Needless to say, that attempt at security would not last long.
Engineering
14日 5月 YE 39
1730 Hours
In the past few days following the strange encounter and subsequent capture by the IYS Kaiyo, Anastasia Barlow had become somewhat of a recluse. It seemed she had taken Teien Eden's orders a little more to the word than usual, spending most of her available time in the engineering bay. It was a mystery to most of the crew what exactly she was cooking up in there in the late hours. Also, it appears she misplaced the pantry's box of Space Puffs.
The winged technician stepped back from the maintenence access shute she had just climbed out of. Taking a moment to admire her handiwork, Anastasia sat on a nearby plastic chair, looking around the empty, yet noisy bay with tired eyes. It's been a long day.
Whith a smooth whizzing noise that would most likely be drowned out by all the mechanical music in the background, the door of the engineering bay slid open, but no footsteps could be heard. Instead the nigh silent rustling of Abart'huse's large serpentine lower body slid across the ground, peeking into the engineering bay out of sheer boredom, humming a tune from jojo's mysterious travels, one of his favourites. "Hmmm hmmm hm hmmm hmmmm~"
Orion walked walked into the engineering bay after, holding a bottle containing water he had previously obtained from the canteen, currently closed in it's original state. He scanned the room for Anastasia, once he located her, he walked up to her quickly.
"I got you some water... Thought you might want some"
The blue winged Elysian extended his arm currently holding the water bottle over to Ana, so she could easily grab it if she wanted to.
Anastasia looked up from her chair, smiling at the sudden visit from Orion. She was wearing a toolbelt-wrapped Type 22 Bodysuit, its red panels stained with a fair bit of grime. "Oh, thank you!" she replied as she gladly took the bottle of water, opening it and taking a swig. "What are you doing here?"
She didn't seem to notice Abart'huse's silent entrance, being on the floor lower than him.
"Just came to visit, and get you the water bottle"
He looked around the engineering bay, smiling slightly, he was a bit worried about Anastasia, she had been working way too much in the past few days, he hadn't even seen her out of the engineering bay.
"You've been working hard down here..."
"Yeah, we haven't seen you in days!" Abart's head soon came popping out into Ana's view, curiously looking around the place. "The guy was getting kinda worried back there, you should've seen his face." He joked a bit, clearly trying to tease Orion a bit more. The past weeks have been boring the heck out of the snek, and one can only do the same excersise so many times before geting sick of it. It was a good thing he still had plenty of sketch paper left, otherwise he would truely lose it on the isolated Kaiyo.
"Abart....."
The blue winged infantry looked back at the snek, the smile disappearing from his face as his cheeks turned red. The now flustered birb took a deep breath and turned back to Anastasia.
"I guess..he is kinda right"
Anastasia looked between the two as they bickered, deciding not to interrupt. "Well, thank you both for visiting!" The cobalt angel stood slowly, giving a small, almost silent giggle. "I've been working day in and out on a method of getting us out of this jam. I've got a theory."
With that, the technician patted the side of the reactor's control pannel, before bringing out a data pad. "Want to hear it?.."
"Not like we're busy at the moment.... right?" The Separa leaned on the top of a nearby machinery box thing. That't the best he could come up with in terms of naming the various bits of equipment in the room. He probs wouldn't understand too much of the technical parts of her story, but she seemed quite confident in her goings-about, so he might as well hear what she had to say. "Let's hear it."
"Sure why not.." Orion replied as he looked up to his much taller crush.
"I don't think we will understand much but... Give it a shot..
Anastasia clapped her hands together, bringing up a few displays on the data pad. They resembled Plumeria model starship engine and reactor schematics. "Well, I have plans to reconfigure the engines to give us an emergency escape jump." Anastasia pointed to the rather large engine accesses to the sides of the group. "I've already set the systems to their max, but it wasn't quite enough. I'm working on pushing the engines just... a little bit past their safety cap to get us home. Once we figure out where that is..."
"By pushing our reactor output to about 2.37 times it's standard generationa rate, and diverting extra energy into the engines without the standard safety caps, my math shows we should get an extraordinary speed boost that will hopefully put us out of reach of the IYS Kaiyō... imposters... Of course, that kind of reaction would create a damaging excess of heat to the engines, so I'll have to increase the pressure of the cooling tanks to compensate. If not, it might burn up all the oxygen in here... and leave us with piles of slag for engines... "
Anastasia ruffled her wings a little bit, closing the display on the datapad. She seemed slightly concerned about that last thought. Soon she had a grin again. "That's the simple explanation. Make sense?"
".........." The blank stare on the Separa's face revealed all the little mental gears running and turning in his head, trying to figure out all that stuff she just said. Safety cap? Cooling? Reconfigure? Last time he heard those words was whilst watching one of those car movies he'd seen a while back. Too bad he himself wouldn't be able to drift like that... "So.....you're gonna NOS the heck out of here....?
"...What? Why would I use nitrous" Anastasia asked, puzzled. "But yes, I... prefer the term sciencing."
Anastasia had not seen many car related movies, though from mechanical experience she knew what he was trying to say.
"You basically gave the reactor an upgrade so it could create enough power to break free from the IYS?"
Orion looked at Anastasia with a slightly confused looking face.
"Yyyes, thats what I hope. It'd be easiest and least risky if we could break free from the tractor beam in a less explosive fashion, but if we can't, then this might just do it." Anastasia looked back over at the two, smiling a little awkwardly. "The math seems to check out."
"I'll take your word for it!" The snek quickly snapped back to attention, having spaced out a little during their conversation. "So far we've always counted on you keeping our gear in perfect order, and you've never let us down. This time's no differrent!" With a quick thumbs up he beamed at the mechanibirb, making his pointy teefers clearly visible.
"Agreed, I don't remember the last time something you made went wrong... Im saying this in the way of nothing you've ever built has gone wrong just in case..."
One of Orions wings twitched as he talked, the blush that previously was on his face decreasing until gone.
Anastasia smiled, looking at the two. "Thank you both. It shouldn't take too long to finish, provided nothing goes wrong I'll only be in here for a few more days..." Anastasia's eyes drooped as she paused, exhaling. "But I guess I can take a break for a little bit."
"Sure! No point in trying to fix up the Kaiyo if yer slowly breaking yerself in the proces." With a little tailswish, his face took on a slightly mischevious look for a second. "I'm kinda thirsty by the way, can i get you two something as well?" He said, perking up a bit with a slightly too exirlted tone, looking between Orion and Anastasia. "Im thinking of an iced tea~" The forked tonguetip ran across his lips, already imagining the sweet, ice-cold freshness.
"I'd just go with water.. I don't really like the taste of iced tea... Echh..."
He looked up at the snek with a "disgusted" face, just to try and annoy him. His wings twitched slightly behind him.
"Hmmkay, a plain 'ol water.... Ana, what about you?" Abart waved it off mostly, aside from sticking out this forked tongue at the teasing bluebirb.
The exhausted Anastasia looked up at the reptilian coworker, thinking for a moment. "I don't really have a preference. Something with caffeine."
Orion smiled as he silently stuck out his own tounge in a snake like manner, mocking the snek yet again.
"Off you go then!" He said as he tried to imitate a British accent, making it a bit too exaggerated, but that would work.
"Heh, sure thing Ana." He replied. After all that work he couldn't blame her for just wanting to stuff some caffeïne down her throat, even if he wasn't a big fan of it himself. Tea was actually a bit more common on Essia than coffee, oddly enough.
Well then, i'll be right back! You two just.....do things.... nor not, i dunno." He turned his body around, smoothly, as if it were on a pivot, slithering off towards the wardroom leaving the birbs alone in the engi-bay. As he slid back past Orion, his tailtip gave a quick, light pat to orion's leg, almost as if tapping out. All that ws missing was the "Go get her hotshot." one would usually see in the movies.
Anastasia was quiet for a moment, watching Abart slither away with a slight bit of unease. She spoke up a moment later, looking at Orion. "Eeeegh. Isn't he your roommate?"
"Yep... He is..." He sighed. "We tend to bother each other as much as possible, he seems obsessed about the thought that you and I are a match..."
"Oohhh..." Anastasia said, trailing off. "I don't like to sound rude, but Separa freak me out a bit."
The technician looked around the large engineering bay, and at the work she still had to do...
"You know, I haven't put much thought into what'll happen if... when we get back." She looked back at Orion, emerald eyes questioning. "I've, erm... bent several Star Army codes in here. Desperate times..."
"Im sure Eden will do something on your favor, you are doing everything you can to get us out, im sure everyone here would appreciate a ticket back home..."
Anastasia looked down at the floor, bashful and red. "...Thank you." After a moment, she looked back up. "It's going to be a strange ride, that's for sure."
Silence crept into the engineering bay, only just kept away by the droning of electrical systems and air pumps. Anastasia thought to her self tiredly, starting to bring out all the deep thoughts.
"Do you ever wonder, if there's anyone looking for us?"
"LLooking for us as in, spying for us and trying to track us down?"
The Elysian looked at Anastasia with a slightly confused face.
"Why do you ask?"
"Trying to track us. If we've been warped to some... unknown space, I can only imagine what the rest of our fleet might of seen. We could of just... dissappeared off the grid." Anastasia shuddered a little bit, thinking about what would happen if they couldn't find their way back. "I'm a little afraid. Of the clones."
"Dont be,they're just reverse you... Mine just annoys me to death... And...who knows.. maybe they think we were captured by the attackers or something, maybe they are, maybe they aren't... There's no way to tell"
"Yeah... Just, pray for the best, I guess." Anastasia looked at Orion's purple eyes and smiled, thinking to herself. "But that's all we can do. What have you been up to recently?"
"Attempting to counter tease my roommate, sleep, go to the gym.. do other boring stuff, watching sci fi movies of some sort"
"Mmmm..." Anastasia hummed, looking out into the wide bay. "I've been spending most of my free time in here, and Yoshida has been spending a crazy amount of time in the gym. I think she's feeling a little... insecure, too."
"Hm... Last time I saw her she looked absolutely pissed...strange behavior to come from that neko.."
"Yeah... she can be kind of terrifying sometimes." Anastasia looked back at Orion. "Our room is always a little strange." The technician leaned back in her chair, looking at the various pipes running across the ceiling.
"Want me to tell you a little secret of Abart? Don't tell anyone though" he said as a little smile evil smiled formed on his face.
Anastasia glanced over at Orion. "Well, I'm fairly good with... secrets. Sure." She broke into a little grin too, stretching her cobalt wings behind her while yawning quietly.
"Lets just say uhh.. our good friend Abart has a crush... Guess on who?"
The technician thought for a moment, humming as she finished stretching. "I don't know... Who?" Her look was questioning, with a little hint of something else under it.
"The resident neko Hanna of course!"
He said as he grinned.
"Aaaaah, I see." Anastasia grimaced. She didn't much like Hanna. She was almost sure the feeling was mutual. She shook the thought out of her mind and looked back over at Orion, crossing one leg over the other. "So, do you have a crush?"
There was a sly little smile on the technicians face. She knew something.
"Uuuuuuuhhhhhmmmmm........"
The birbs face turned red instantly as his "crush" asked him if he had a "crush". The flustered birb felt his face heat up as he looked over at Ana.
Anastasia leaned back and gave a quiet little laugh as Orion's face turned beet red. After a moment she leaned forward. "Hey, it's alright. I think I know." She gave a wide smile, standing up to face the flustered sniper. "I figured it out a while back."
"HmHmmm... So... Now the question resides in, do you have a crush?"
He said as he kept looking at her, even as she got closer.
Anastasia smiled. "For the record, yes. I like you! You're kind of funny, and talking to you seems to make your day better. Also, your job is pretty awesome."
"Yeah... Talking to you makes me forget im antisocial for some reason... And... You consider aiming a lethal stick at enemies awesome?"
"Well, not so much the lethal stick as much as being able to do that from crazy high places. Most of the time I'm forcing myself into a cramped conduit... Ya know?" Anastasia smiled, placing a hand on Orion's shoulder. "You helped teach me how to fly, that's something I've rarely gotten the chance to even think about.
"You're welcome... Atleast you had the privilege to learn outside. I learnt how to fly inside my old house, first time I hit my head with the ceiling... Hard.."
Anastasia smiled and tilted her head to the side, before frowning just a bit. "Yeeah, its not much of an inside sport, is it?..." Anastasia put her hands together, blushing as the realization that in her sleep-deprived stupor she had said more than she realized. "Sooo, yeah..!"
"I see im not the only one who is currently blushing... Thats relieving.. I thought I was being an idiot up until now...", said Orion.
"Dont worry, you two are both looking goofy enough to me~" With a toothy grin Abart peeked right at the two lovebirds, lying on top of a nearby storage crate like the sneaky snek he was. His tail protruded forward from behind him, holding their respective beverages. "Here's your drinks."
Anastasia nearly jumped out of her skin as the snake made his sudden reappearance, her dark blue feathers visibly ruffled. She turned to face the snake, shaken but still red. "A-bart'huse!.." She calmed and noticed the drinks, awkwardly picking hers up off the reptilian tail table. She took a sip of the caffeinated beverage, though it looks like the scare has already woken her up.
"Aargh!"
The fellow birb faced his rival snek as he jumped and almost fell from where he was sitting. His expression then changed from spooked to annoyed.
"Abarrrrt! Don't do that....!"
Abart'huse couldn't suppress a soft giggle, clearly planning something like this from the start. He wiggled his tail in front of Orion, still holding out his drink. "C'moooon, t'was only a little spook. Everyone's been acting so serious and tense lately.... try to loosen up a bit." while he sure got a kick out of jumpscaring the two like that, he figured it would be a good way to break the ice somewhat between the three, especially during these weird times, locked up in some whacky mirror world.
Anastasia continued sipping her drink as she watched Orion take his own. The technician curled her gloved fingers around the sniper's, giving him a look with her eyes that said "Talk later?" The sneaky snakiness of his roommate was still getting at her internally, but she wanted not to show it too much on the outside. They would have to talk to Abart'huse at some point, but for now she chose to remain quiet on the rather embarrassing revelations they had just given by the light of the deadly aether reactor mere meters away from them.
Needless to say, that attempt at security would not last long.
